


Ceaselessly (searching for you)

by sammyspreadyourwings



Series: How NOT to make deals with otherworldly beings [2]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Arguing, Bargaining, Blood and Injury, Codependency, Depression, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Getting Back Together, HIV/AIDS, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Multi, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Open Relationships, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Terminal Illnesses, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Dynamics, ask to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 23:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20299339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammyspreadyourwings/pseuds/sammyspreadyourwings
Summary: He wakes up in a world where Freddie Mercury was deathly ill from pneumonia but survived. He lives in a world where Queen has never kept a guitarist beyond an album.Brian May wakes up in a world where the men who are his world do not know his name.akaMaking deals with heaven might not get you a happy ending.





	Ceaselessly (searching for you)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of a five-day binge. Hopefully, it reads right, and let me know if there are any glaring issues. But yeah. Enjoy!  
Let me know if I need to tag anything else.

> _I’d give a lot to be out on tour next month._

Brian leans back against the couch whiskey finger in hand. The room is dark save for the tiniest sliver of moonlight. It graces the Old Lady with its shine bringing out the scratches on the red body. She seems as though she is in mourning, with her loose strings and matte coloring. He is sure that if he picks her up, her sound would be somber baying.

The burn is smooth down his throat. Glass now empty, he sets it on the coaster. His house is vacant of alcohol, having spent the past days or weeks shuffling around as though he is the haunting spirit and not the living owner. It is late if he must judge by the brightness of the moon. There is likely no store open this late and none that would give him the anonymity he craves. Not with so many reporters picking at them like a vulture does a carcass, asking what the future of Queen will be.

He does not know. No one does. Queen had been their future and their present and their past. With one of them swearing that they will never be Queen again, Brian is not sure that the band has not been buried in that same empty coffin.

“What do you think?” Brian asks the guitar.

She says nothing.

“You don’t know either.”

He had not expected her to answer. His constant companion since he was sixteen. She knows his ways and now it seems that like him, she has lost grasp of the music. Brian has tried to write, the words and notes falling through his fingertips like sand. They always end up being apologies to a man who will never hear them and to the family he will not send them to.

Not yet. Not while he draws breath through his lungs. However long that may be. He stands, shaky with the alcohol thrumming through his veins. The house is quiet save his unsteady steps.

Outside he can make out the few constellations of late fall. The moon’s silver tint illuminates the garden. It is eerie. Shadows seem longer but the few fountains and ponds he has shimmer bright. He treks a familiar path, towards a well-hidden gift.

The rose bush drops its leaves in lifelessness. Brian does not believe in things he cannot prove with science (he finds himself turning to a higher power these past few months, begging. Bargaining. They tell him it is the grief) but it grew sick at nearly the same rate. There is hope for it yet, still some green on the leaves and one spectacularly stubborn white bloom. It should not have bloomed in fall at all.

He touches the silk-soft petals, one drops into his palm. Brian holds it up to the sky, it looks like it is his own drop of moonlight. It rests heavily on his palm despite weighing nothing. Maybe he can press the petal, as a memory of this flower he knows is going to die.

Memento Mori.

There is splashing from one of the further ponds. The cold is starting to bite into his flesh, tinging it blue from the first winter’s breath. He tightens the petal in his grasp, holding fast when it does not matter that the petal will dry out in a few days’ time.

It is inevitable, but he feels like fighting it. Screaming in the face of fate that something so breathtaking should be so short-lived. He wants to fight and get angry. Push it until he gets his way.

Only when he reaches up to rub the itchiness from his eyes does he realize that he has started to cry. The first tears since the day after the call. He has not let himself think about it. Afraid that he will never climb up from the pit beneath him. Too afraid that he does not _want _to climb out of that pit.

Why should he when there is no plan and the fear that they have buried Queen? Buried his life. What does he have now? Two equally devastated friends (_partners, brothers, soulmates), _a lover’s love, and a legacy of music that they cannot bring back.

There is nothing splashing in the pond. It is still. The air is still too. The wind halts. Moonlight focuses on the pond but as he looks up, he cannot see any reason for it to act like this. It is perhaps a trick of the light or a grief-ridden mind and he is looking for miracles in nature when there are none to be found.

The petal falls from his grasp, seeming to float down to the center of the light. He does not know when he let it go, just that he _had. _Now he cannot get it back and he regrets the action desperately. As though clinging to it tighter would keep it with him. There is no reason to be so distraught over a petal, but his mind is numbed by drink and his heart battered by sadness.

If he cannot keep such a simple thing as a petal then how could he have expected to keep such a wonderful person such as Freddie?

_“You are not meant to keep beautiful things.”_

He looks up in surprise at the voice. A woman is in his garden. Deep red hair and a silver gown. She glows with moonlight. In her hand is the petal now restored to an unwilted state.

It is a hallucination he is certain.

_“Perhaps,” _the woman quirks her lips, _“but such things rarely matter to the desperate man. No?”_

The garden is empty, save for the few creatures of the night. He can afford to lose his sanity for the moment if it puts him together again later. When he needs to face the public (and does not have to defend Freddie’s legacy from people saying it is _his fault). _

“I suppose not,” his voice rasps from the burn and the tears.

_“Brian May, child of the stars.”_

He nods. The woman knows who he is, so he doubts he needs to confirm it. Just once he would like to meet someone that does not know who he is. Like Jim, when Freddie had just started bringing him around.

_“What drives you to seek such a request? Greed for fame? Lust?”_

It is selfish he knows. All he knows is touring and the band and the names of stars hundreds of millions of miles away. He does not know what to _do _without that. His love is tangled up in one extraordinary thing which has now reached its end. It makes sense he would want it back.

_“Love, then? Raguel’s song sits deep in your bones.”_

The name rings a distant bell, but from where he cannot say.

_“Such a man of science,” _the woman smiles, _“do you believe?”_

“In what?” The words are bitter.

He had believed, once. In things of a higher power, the universe’s kindness, when it brought four shining souls together in dingy London pubs. Now he does not know what there is to ask questions too. The universe has never seemed more like its heat death.

_“I suppose not. I wonder if you will believe me? No, you want to **believe**_ _me. The question is what you will give.”_

Brian frowns, “give for what?”

_“You yourself said you would give a lot to be out on tour, was that just grief?”_

“Would it still not be?” He asks.

The woman does truly smile then, _“clever boy.”_

** _“Our clever Brimi.”_ **

He cannot stop the sob. It tears from somewhere deep in him. His soul screams in torment. In the unfairness of it all. Brian’s knees sink into the dew-damp grass, his head thrown back and arms wide.

_“The pain you feel. How do you still stand?”_

He is not. He does not want to. The only reason he has not crumbled under this sadness is because of young children and the other parts of his soul. They are out of reach and he is splintering. A predictable result of a collision knocking a planet out of orbit.

_“Then, perhaps, you **will**_,” the woman speaks softly.

“Will what?” Brian demands.

This hallucination is playing with him. Tugging things out of him he does not want to face yet, because what happens when he stops hurting too violently? Does that mean he stops loving so tenderly? He cannot lose that love.

_“Take the bargain.”_

A deal with the devil if he ever heard one. But he is tempted. So, so, very tempted if what he thinks is on the table.

_“No. Not the devil.”_

He cannot stare at the face of the woman as she nears. Her light too bright, and it dawns on him where he has heard the name Raguel before. In long forgotten hymns his mother hummed.

“What are you offering? What am I giving?”

_“I’m offering **him**_.”

Brian hunches and grips the grass, ripping it up by the roots. The scream lodges in his throat like a note he cannot hit. He had thought that this is where this was going to go. Even if this is a dream or a hallucination, he wants to accept the deal without knowing what he must give because he will give a lot to have that back.

“_Will you give them?”_

He will not. He will not give them. Two for one, no matter how bright the star shines, it is not a fair deal. Frankly, Freddie would kill him for even considering that offer. So, he will not.

_“No. Not their lives. I mean give them **up**_.”

He does not understand the meaning.

_“The three, ah four, of them, they will still be together. A band perhaps. They will live their lives into their twilight years. Together, and perhaps happily.”_

“But I will not be a part of their lives. How would that even work?”

_“We have ways.”_

Could he do that? Watch them from afar? Watch them be happy without him? He thinks about how John has barely said a word, barely eaten and barely slept. He thinks about Roger, how his positive energy has vanished into a well of numbness; his natural shine dimmed without their light.

A promise of more than a scare twenty years. Without him. Is he willing to give up everything for Freddie?

**“What have we got to lose?”**

“Yes.”

_“Yes?”_

“Whatever you have to do. Bring him back. Make them forget about me. Hell, move me to Australia. Just give him back to them!”

**“Brian, you stupid, stupid man. We can’t do this without you.”**

The woman’s face dims to show genuine surprise.

_“Why?”_

“Why?” Brian laughs, “because this _killed _them. We won’t ever come back from this. At least someone gets a happy ending.”

_“Who is to say you will not?” _

“We might come back together. Make our tribute songs and concerts. Play for three decades more. But that doesn’t matter so much when he’s gone. It’ll be an ending with happy moments.”

Brian wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. He does not have to say to the woman what he is thinking about doing, just to silence the voice in his head and the burn in his throat and the hole in his chest. They will not lose two this way. They will never have known one.

_“I will let you keep your memories.”_

It is a mercy and a curse.

* * *

**“Okay**, truth or dare, Bri?” Roger grins flushed from their stolen vodka.

Brian leans heavily into Freddie, “how do you know it’s me?”

Roger waves his hand, nudging John awake when he slaps his face, “cause! I said it was you!”

“Well, you can’t argue that,” Freddie laughs.

“_He _could,” John murmurs.

He sends the bassist a heavy glare. John is not impressed or too drunk to care. Maybe he was too drunk to make an impressive glare? Yeah. He was probably just squinting. That is why John is not afraid.

“Well?” Roger leans towards him, their nose centimeters apart.

Freddie is quite comfortable, so he does not want to get up for whatever Roger has come up with.

“Truth.”

“Lame,” John snorts.

Roger hushes John by slapping a palm across his face, “okay. Would you rather forget everyone or have everyone forget you?”

“Wrong game,” Freddie says.

“Hush!”

“Can people still talk and interact with me?”

“Yeah! They just won’t know who you are to them?”

“Even my mom?”

“Well, I suppose so.”

Brian hums, “I guess I’d rather be forgotten.”

“Why?”

“It’s better than wondering why I love the stars or the guitar. And I much rather keep my important people in my head.”

“But they won’t remember you!” Roger seems distraught.

Brian is knocked back by a crying Roger. The blond has wrapped around him, tears wetting his shirt and eyes brighter.

“I don’t want to forget about you!”

“Wait we’re forgetting Brian?” John jumps up and wiggles under Roger’s arm, “not possible.”

He wheezes at the weight of two full-grown men on his chest. Freddie is staring at him with wide eyes.

“Don’t worry, sweet Brimi, we won’t ever forget about you. I swear.”

His heart twists at the pure adoration in his voice.

“Fantastic. Now can you stop them from crushing me!”

He should have suspected that Freddie would climb on top of the pile. Brian groans in complaint, but eventually settles down. At least he knows that they are as willing to fight for him as they are to fight with him.

“Roger you’re on my spleen!”

* * *

The dream leaves a bitter taste on his mouth.

Perhaps the strangest part about this is how he wakes up the next morning. There is no sign of a strange woman granting his prayers, but like how he knows how to breathe, he knows that the world has shifted.

His proof comes when he stares at the News of the World gold disk, and his character is replaced by a man he has never seen before. The Game also shows a different man.

He wakes up in a world where Freddie Mercury was deathly ill from pneumonia but survived. He lives in a world where Queen has never kept a guitarist beyond an album.

Brian May wakes up in a world where the men who _are_ his world do not know his name.

And yet he still finds himself making a familiar breakfast of black tea sweetened with honey and fresh fruit. The Red Special rests on her stand, still worn like she has done hundreds of shows around the world, but no one has ever heard her sing.

A part of him wonders if someone else wrote his songs. If ’39 is still hummed by hundreds of people a day unaware that he has somehow become that astronaut. What if he were to go to Garden Lodge? They would not know him, but could they grow to love him again.

Or would he lose this blessing?

He will not risk it. Instead, he picks up the packet of new sheet music _The Show Must Go On _marked in red pen, shaky from when Freddie’s body was being ravaged by a disease that will never touch him in this life. He sets the music to the side and starts writing out the songs he has written. They are not the same as they were when he first recorded them, but before he exists and forgets these melodies, he wants them to be in the world.

If he is truly the only one who could have written them.

It takes him until the sky has turned orange with the sunset to realize that he is hungry. He feels like he is existing in a dream, but this is his place now.

There is no food in the kitchen, he knows that because there is never any food in the kitchen. It would all be spoiled by the time he came back from tour. Especially since his wives rarely stayed in the mansion while he was gone. Too big. Too empty. Filled with too many promises. At least he will not have broken their hearts in this world. His children will not have to live with knowing that he fought with their mother.

He does not have any of that anymore. Brian nearly regrets it, but he remembers what this has bought him.

The glass in his hand shatters. His grip turning too tight as he thinks about his kids and what could have happened in this world (or if they had been born at all). When he made the deal, he had not been thinking of them.

Instead, he steps on the glass shards in his attempt to reach the sink. He hisses and smacks his hand against the table, smearing blood on the surface. Which only makes him step back onto another shard, which digs into his foot deeper.

With grace he does not usually have, he hops onto the top of the table and yanks the shard free. The blood flows freely, but he does not think it is a fatal amount. He can grab a cloth napkin from where they are hanging and press it to the wound. His hand is bleeding as well, but he cannot do anything until his foot is taken care of.

**“How’d you manage twenty-six years, Brian? You’ve nearly killed yourself three times in eight meters.”**

“Shut up, John,” he presses the cloth tighter to the wound, “I’ve managed just fine by myself.”

**“Fine by your standards, you mean? Give me that before you injure your hand further. You’re our guitarist you need those!”**

No large hand takes the cloth from him and gently wipes away the smears. He is not a guitarist anymore and while he would rather not ruin his hands, they are not a thing to be cherished. The blood slows down on his foot and he risks standing on it.

If he still had doubts about this being a dream, they die at the sharp burn racing up his leg once he steps down. He stumbles over to his sink and turns on the cold tap and the water runs over his hand. It stings. The pain curls in his belly.

“Fuck.”

There is no teasing laughter or caring tsks, and he feels an emptiness like he has never felt before entering his bloodstream. The sting dies down and he looks down to see a tiny crescent cut. He thinks about damning the moon, but she had done nothing but give this wayward son exactly what he dreamt of.

* * *

Roger Taylor knows his moods come in like the tides, a singular ebb and flow dictated by nothing more than the moon. He feels things like they are as deep as the ocean, and he always knows why he feels that way. Maybe not why it deserved the reaction it got, but always why.

But he wakes up feeling like he has lost his arm and wants to sob, but he does not know _why. _It feels like when he slammed into the truck when he was a kid, but he has not been in a wreck and nobody is dead or seriously injured. He just feels like there is.

He turns his head to reassure himself that Freddie is alive and well next to him. The pneumonia had snuck up on all of them, and nearly claimed their singer for their negligence. Freddie releases soft breaths, which stir Jim’s hair. The sight makes him smile but he does not lose the feeling that someone died.

“Roggie?” John asks.

A single gray eye peeks through heavy lids. Roger reaches down to stroke through the short hair, he would have never thought gray would be a good look for John. Until he saw it for himself, that is.

“Morning.”

“Hm,” John stretches and curls away from him.

Maybe it is an instinctive feeling? Like he is going to get a call that Clare is in the hospital. God, he hopes not, but things like this happen.

“Rog, where are you at?”

“Here,” he presses a light kiss to John’s temple as he settles down, “here, my love. Nowhere else.”

“There’s nothing wrong then?”

“Not presently,” Roger offers a smile, “just my favorite three people all cuddled together. Can’t find anything wrong with that.”

“No?”

“Nope.”

John pulls him close, “then why do I feel like there’s something wrong?”

John too? Maybe it was the strange food they ate last night? Had they eaten dinner? He had been fairly distracted with Freddie trying to make up for all the time he had been in the hospital. Yeah, they are just hungry.

“Probably because we haven’t eaten in eighteen or so hours.”

John blinks, “ah. That’s it.”

“Let’s go be good boyfriends and make breakfast,” Roger says.

“Why can’t I take mine in bed as well?”

“Because this way they’ll get more than well-done sausages and bacon.”

For a moment the words feel foreign on his tongue. Like it is wrong, but no. They have had bacon and sausage for breakfast frequently this week, it is what Jim bought. John looks at him strangely.

“Okay.”

They stumble towards the kitchen, wrapped together in a small embrace. John keeps pressing kisses on his face and Roger returns them eagerly. He bumps into one of the tables in the hallway filled with Freddie’s favored antiques, they rattle. Roger ducks into John’s neck laughing in relief when none shatter.

“Have we always had that vase?’

Roger turns. The vase John was gesturing at was a tall pitcher, thin lines connected stars together in strange patterns he never cared to learn, the phases of the moon around the base. He has never seen it before, but the feeling of grief doubles in his chest as he stares at it. Freddie probably bought a cursed vase.

“I think it’s new.”

“Oh, they did go shopping Wednesday.”

Problem solved they walk to the kitchen, less entwined. Roger shakes his head; it must be the mood of the day. Things will pass. John digs around in the cabinet for their preferred breakfast tea while Roger pulls out the eggs, bacon, and sausage. He returns to the fridge and pulls out the fresh fruit too.

John raises an eyebrow but says nothing as he feels the kettle with water.

Soon the house is filled with the scent of breakfast. The tension leaves his body as John talks about their plans for today. They must get a new guitarist, again, since their last one quit. Today is resume reading.

“Think this one will stick?”

“Hopefully,” John shrugs, “but I can’t imagine we’ll be doing this much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Roger swallows thickly.

His heart cannot take another year like the one he has just had.

“I mean we’re all getting older. Making music and playing, that’s all well and good. How many people want to go to a concert to see men in their fifties? Sixties?”

Roger supposes John has a fair point, but he has always assumed that they would just keep touring until they physically could not.

“We can still make more albums,” Roger shrugs.

John hums, “then we wouldn’t need a stable guitarist.”

“Imagine that though.”

“No tours?”

He shakes his head, “no, imagine what our music could be, would be, with a stable guitarist. A guy who gets us!”

Roger flips the bacon, “what songs he could come up with. What he could give our songs because he’s not afraid we’re going to fire him. God. It’d be amazing.”

“It sounds like a headache. A guitarist like that would be arrogant.”

“And we aren’t?”

John hums.

“Good morning, my loves!”

He smiles as Freddie struts in with nothing more than boxers and a dressing gown. His skin is still pale from the illness, but his eyes dance with life and mirth. Roger laughs as Freddie pulls him into a kiss.

“Morning Fred,” John says.

Jim enters only a moment later, “morning you two.”

“G’morning Jim!” Roger calls from where Freddie has his face smooshed from kisses.

“Look at that, you two haven’t burned breakfast.”

Both John and Roger scamper off when Jim picks up the spatula. They both know how the man is about his kitchen. Freddie sits down next to John and puts his feet in his lap. John rubs the arch. Roger taps the table restlessly.

Jim scrapes the food into the serving dishes.

Roger perks up when the food is set in front of him.

“So, loves, do you think we’ll be able to find out guitarist today?”

“Not just looking through the resumes and sample songs,” Roger frowns, “if they’re even out there.”

“They must be!” Freddie pulls several pieces of fruit onto his plate.

“Doesn’t mean they’ll audition, Fred,” John bites into a piece of bacon, “I mean, they could be a person no one has ever heard of. Maybe they won’t make it past our screeners.”

“Pssh,” Freddie waves his hand, “they’ll come.”

“It’s been two decades,” Roger says bitterly.

Freddie looks at him with a frown.

“If they are out there, we would’ve found them by now.”

His throat tightens and he suddenly feels like crying. John’s face falls, and he knows he must be doing a poor job keeping his face neutral. He cannot help it; the grief is crushing against his lungs. Abruptly he shoves his plate away from him and stands.

“Roggie.”

He hurries out of the kitchen, grabbing the first heavy thing he could find and lobbing it towards a wall. It thuds a few feet away, leaving a dent in the wood but the plaster survives. He keeps hurrying towards their bedroom. This feeling does not make sense. He does not get it.

It is probably just too much stress. Something reasonable, because everyone is fine. They are in the kitchen now, enjoying (or they were) breakfast. Alive. Healthy. Together. Things are how they are meant to be.

He throws himself onto the bed his hands in his hair tugging harshly, his breath coming out in ragged gasps.

Freddie followed him.

“Liz, my love, what’s gotten into you?”

He looks at Freddie, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Freddie wraps around him, his hand cupping the back of his neck, whispering soft nothings. Roger clings to him, it is comforting to be pressed against Freddie’s chest as breaths easily flow through the lungs. No more wheezing or rattling. He counts the heartbeats.

“What’s brought this on?”

“I don’t know,” he says again, helplessly, “I woke up feeling like this. Like I lost something. I don’t know.”

“Everyone is okay.”

“Don’t you think I know that? Everyone is happy in the kitchen, and someone would’ve called me by now if it was Clare or one of the kids.”

Freddie rubs his back, “maybe we should wait on looking through the paperwork today?”

“No,” he breathes, “we need to get that done. It’s important.”

“It can wait, we’ve only just gotten back on our feet.”

“If we wait any longer, we’ll lose the attention of the public.”

“That doesn’t matter. We can get it back.”

Roger shakes his head and buries it back in Freddie’s shoulder. He holds tightly to the back of Freddie’s dressing gown, afraid that he is going to slip again.

“Tell me about him,” Roger whispers, “who you think our guitarist should be.”

Freddie rubs his back, “well. I’ve always seen him as someone whose gentle but not afraid to fight back. An excellent songwriter, perhaps a bit sad. We need that between you and I. His guitar playing will be like nothing we’ve ever heard.”

“He’ll have a mellow voice, maybe not as strong as mine or yours, but easy to listen to. Bright too, in spirit and mind.”

“He sounds like a dream, where are you getting this?”

“I’ve dreamt about him,” Freddie says with a laugh, “dreams where his back is turned towards me, so I don’t know him, but he tilts his guitar up and makes the most incredible sounds.”

“I want to hear it,” Roger pouts.

“We will, someday,” Freddie kisses his temple, “until then how about you and I steal a few more hours of sleep?”

* * *

**Roger** does not know where he is at. It is raining and the area he is in does not feel familiar. He looks around. The street signs. They are blank. What is he doing here?

Waiting. The answer seems right. Waiting for what? For who? He pulls his raincoat tighter around him. It is soaked through from the downpour. It is all he has. Even if the rain is sapping at his body heat. Why?

Someone. He is waiting for someone. The person is not here yet. That seems strange. He does not want to walk. He does not know where he is at. This person he feels like has never been late. Not without cause.

They will be here. He is cold and wet. Lost, too. The street signs are blank. Fear runs up his spine. Maybe he should leave. The area is dark. Save for the streetlight he is standing under. So, it is late, and he is lost and it is raining. Why is he still here?

That person. Who? Why can’t he remember who he is meeting?

“Roger?”

Warmth. Warmth. Gentle. He knows that voice. That is the person he is waiting for. The rain almost drowns out the person. He turns to yell at them for making him wait for so long. There is no one there. He twists to the other side. He is alone.

“What are you doing out here?”

Softly. Caring. Warmth. Who is it?

“Waiting for you, you prick,” his answer surprises him.

There is no one there.

“Me?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Why?” He sputters, “because I haven’t seen you in two weeks! You’ve been blowing everyone off!”

Wait. Is he on a porch? Had he not been standing on the side of the street? Who has he not seen in two weeks?

“Thanks, I’m fine. Roger.”

“You aren’t!”

He feels like he is about to cry.

“I see you hurting, and I don’t know _why. _Let me help.”

The voice does not answer him.

* * *

John tosses a pillow towards their head. Roger rubs his face in the pillow to clear his face of tears before anyone can see them. Freddie knows he has been crying. John and Jim probably have guessed at it, but he doesn’t feel like dodging probing eyes all day.

“We need to get ready to go to the studio.”

“Ugh, can’t they just schedule the auditions?” Freddie whines.

“They wanted to, remember, but you said that it would save everyone time if we picked out the guitarist,” John replies.

“Right.”

“Not that it’s helped any,” Roger grumbles.

“How are you feeling?” John asks him.

“Better. Just woke up weird, I guess. Probably had a weird dream I can’t remember.”

Both Freddie and John look skeptical at that. Roger dislodges their concern with a scowl and a shake of his head. Granted the move was more effective when he had long hair. John steps out of his way as he moves to the bathroom.

All they are doing is reading some shitty resumes and probably even shittier songs. He tosses his sleep clothes into the bin and climbs into the shower. The water is cold when it hits him. The shock makes him yelp but it cools his building anger.

He hears the bathroom door open, and he is unsurprised to feel John wrap his arms around him after a few minutes.

“Stealing all the hot water from Fred?” John kisses his temple.

“Mmhm,” Roger leans back.

“He shouldn’t mind, considering he’s on that cold-water skincare routine.”

John chuckles, “how long is that going to last?”

“Longer than him being on that plant-based diet.”

“Why did he do that again?” John frowns.

“Who knows, someone probably said something at a party.”

Roger faces John reaching around him to grab the soap. John pecks him on the cheek and steals the bottle from him before squirting a generous amount into his hands. Lazy arousal stirs in his belly.

“How much time do we have?” He asks.

John raises an eyebrow, “not enough.”

“Are you sure?”

He groans when John starts rubbing the shampoo through his hair, using his long fingers to knead deeply.

“Yes, because Fred will want to join and then he’ll bring Jim into this, and we’ll never get out of the house.”

John pulls him forward.

“Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Roger.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time we missed a meeting.”  
“No, but I’d like to avoid pushing out luck – head back.”

He tilts back into the spray. John’s breath ghosts next to his pulse point. Roger’s knees almost give out when he feels the bassist bite down. A loud moan echoes around the tile.

“Bloody tease.”

“It’s a promise,” John presses a kiss to the mark.

Roger reaches up to wrap his arms around John’s shoulder. He connects their lips slowly, his dick starting to stir at the constant changing pressure of fingers on his ass. If he were ten years younger, he would not have any complaint about getting on his knees.

“Conditioner,” John gasps.

He wiggles his eyebrows.

“Not for that you tart.”

“Boo, you’re no fun,” he says handing the bottle over.

All is forgiven when John again works his fingers into Roger’s scalp. The tension he did not know he was carrying bleeds out of him, even if he is half hard and they are not going to do anything about it. At least his noises seem to be having the same effect on John.

“Okay, rinse.”

He runs his hands through his hair as John finishes his own hair routine. The soap the rest of themselves up, Roger gets a little too handsy and John swats him.

“Hey.”

“You know you want it,” Roger purrs.

“I have patience,” John grins, “unlike some people!”

Roger laughs, “how dare you?”

They manage to keep the shenanigans to a minimum for the rest of the shower, stepping out just moments before the spray went icy. Roger rubs the towel over his hair quickly, allowing it to spike naturally before falling flat again. He really does not feel like styling it, but he knows he will hate wearing it flat more.

He grabs the gel. A loud moan pierces the hair followed by an even longer groan. Roger narrows his eyes at John.

“See! We could’ve been doing that!”

John shrugs, “hindsight.”

Roger almost wants to follow him, knowing that he is going to walk into the bedroom without a care as to what is happening on the bed. He refrains because he can hold out long enough for them to read through all this paperwork. Then he hears a groan that distinctly is John’s.

“Traitor!” He squawks leaving the hair gel behind.

* * *

Jim has seen the search for _the _guitarist before. At least three times since he met Freddie, and every time he finds himself hating it even more. It is fun, on one level, to watch the auditions. The guitarists are always top-notch, the playing is fantastic and a lot of them are at the very least eccentric. No two are alike, but by the end of the day, they all blend together.

See, the process goes like this: The guitarists are pulled by groups of ten, randomly assigned. They play a cover of a Queen song and then they demonstrate their writing ability and then they must adlib to either John’s or Roger’s playing. If they get through the first two no issue, they will usually fumble by the third if there is something wrong.

Roger will play something fast or slow depending on the guitarist’s obvious preference or John will play some tricky bass line that distracts the guitarist. The guitarists that survive that gauntlet gets put into a separate pile.

Some guitarists also decide to audition their singing, as well, but Freddie is particularly ruthless on their vocals.

The other thing, Jim has noticed being the silent observer that he is, is that the boys had preferences. Something about the first reaction that gives Jim an idea where they will vote at the end of the day. Freddie is drawn to gentle presences and tall figures while Roger perks up if the speaker has a warm timbre to their voice and then there is John who pays more attention if he has never seen the type of guitar or the body is deep red.

Jim does not get it. Music is something he can enjoy but he cannot compare his enjoyment to his boys who live and breathe it. Obviously, there must be something that draws them to those guitarists. The one Freddie claims is out there must be a blend of all three.

Often, when the auditions become monotonous because they keep playing Somebody to Love because they think it is the most impressive, he thinks about what the blend would look like.

What he comes up with is a tall fellow whose voice sounds as gentle and warm as his presence and a red guitar. When he tries to add details all he can think about is intelligent eyes and curly hair. He has never said the image to the others because he is quite sure they will tell him he is thinking of Slash. Perhaps he is, without the aggressive presence the other guitarist gives.

Jim has seen the search before and that is why he hates it. At the end of the day, they are all in low spirits, because they do not find that perfect combination they are looking for. They will always get a good guitarist, but as Freddie frequently claims it is not _their _guitarist. It explains why they do not stick around, and it is not because they are unwelcome. With a group like Queen, in order to be the best they can, all four pieces need to be seamless fits.

Freddie’s chair scrapes across the floor, “we’re breaking for lunch.”

Roger huffs and flips his drum stick carelessly, “was _anyone _worth it?”

“I thought numbers 6, 31, and 35 were decent enough,” John answers.

Jim watches him shuffle the papers pulling out the pictures stapled to the sheet. It is no surprise that John’s picked out the ones with red-bodied guitars. He does not remember them.

“31 could sing, too? Harmonized nicely with you Rog.”

“Not bad.”

“Jim, darling, what did you think?”

He hums, “I liked 31.”

He does not actually know if 31’s guitar playing was any better than the others, but at least he worked with John instead of fighting with the bassist for the lead. Or at least he did not think he fought with him, really he has no idea what makes a good addition to the band.

“Put him through,” Freddie says.

“Lunch should be here soon, yeah?”

“I think Crystal went out to get us something,” Roger says.

“What would we do without that PA of yours?”

John shrugs, “probably starve.”

Jim laughs, “well it’s good he’s around on tour, then.”

Roger grins setting the drumsticks down on the table. He struts towards Jim; he rolls his eyes at the antics but he cannot help the smile.

“Thanks for being here, Jim,” he says seriously, “you have the final say after all.”

He bats at the blond’s hands. Really, he does not know why but he knows his approval means a lot to them. More than that, he is happy to see Roger and John back in high spirits. The past few weeks Roger seemed like he was lost. No, looking for something. John was filled with nervous energy.

If Freddie had been affected in the same way, he has not shown it. Then again, it could have been residual worry from their near-miss. Jim tightens his fist for a brief second as he recalls those awful weeks. Roger grabs it and kisses his palm.

“We’ll be done soon.”

The door opens, “Crystal's food delivery service, don’t bother paying me now. I’ll add it to your tab.”

Crystal is juggling several bags of take-out with the ease of a man who has done this a million times. John rushes over to help only to be shoed away to clear a table.

“What’s my tab up to now?” Roger raises an eyebrow

“I think a vacation to Cancun,” Crystal says.

“Is that all?”

“Yeah, but you don’t ever give me vacation time.”

“You’re free to go, but I’ll have to come with.”

“The vacation is from you, boss.”

Roger sticks out his tongue. Jim snorts, patting Roger’s hand in consolation. John has already started to sneak food. Meanwhile, Freddie has started to sketch something on the back of a blank audition form. He keeps flicking his eyes around the room, and Jim is loathed to move, curious to see what Freddie is drawing now.

“Get my good side,” Roger calls.

Jim takes the second offered hand to pull him out of the chair. He might not want to move, but the food is hard to resist.

“You have a good side?” Freddie shoots back.

Roger crosses his arms and opens his mouth. Certain that they are about to squabble Jim squeezes Roger’s shoulder, “he means that you don’t have a bad one.”

Freddie raises his hand in objection, but Jim sends him a look and he lowers it once more. They do not need a fight today. There will be plenty of arguments when it comes to who they are going to hire. He can only hope that this one is going to be the one that sticks.

* * *

**Jim** is standing on the wings at Live Aid. Queen is performing, Freddie pulling the crowd under his spell while Roger and John weave it tightly. It is always invigorating to watch Freddie do what he was born to. This is his first concert and god does he love the energy bouncing off the crowd to the stage and back again. The more the crowd echoes back to Radio Ga Ga, the smoother John groves along to his bass and the harder Roger hits the drums and the greater the guitarist plays his instrument.

Freddie is flawless.

One moment he can faintly make out the guitarist, the light obscuring in such a strange way. The song sounds identical but it feels better? This is not the guitarist he met, because this playing seems effortless. For a moment he thinks he can see who it is, but the image slips through his brain.

John shimmies in front of him and Jim is distracted by his dancing. Jim smiles at John, who nods back to him and turns towards the end of the stage where the guitarist is pacing. He looks almost in love. Jim should be jealous, but he is not.

This guitarist has caught him too.

* * *

Brian’s alarm sounds. He shuts it off and stretches out his back. His bed is empty, and while he is accustomed to that feeling it still surprises him. Sunbeams lay across the untouched side. The blanket fabric bleached from the light.

Maybe he should buy a second one, just to spare this one an untimely fate. Brian shakes his head; it is one of the three mementos he has found that belonged to his boys. Roger’s mom had spent a lot of money for them on their first flat, least of which the heavy red quilt that had turned into a bed for late nights in the living room. In this world, they have never used it, so it did not smell like them. Brian can trick his mind into thinking that they are all working on their solo projects.

He passes by the calendar on the wall, crossing out the date with a sharpie. Day 365 since – oh. Brian rubs his thumb along his stubble. He feels like he is stuck in limbo, every day is the same, but they aren’t. Grief spins in his stomach.

Today would have been one full revolution without Freddie Mercury. In some ways, it had been one without him. Brian swallows the bitter bile that climbs up his throat. Whoever the woman had been, kept her promise. Queen lives. Freddie lives. He tries hard to not scowl when he hears their songs on the radio.

Brian loves hearing them, but he hates that he is not playing with them. The guitarist seems lackluster in interviews, as though this is just a way to fame. That he does not care about the music. The guitarist does not know what he has, those late nights in the studio arguing over lyrics and tempos. Hearing Roger shout at him to speed up and John’s tired threats about what he is going to do if Brian asks for another solo and Freddie encouraging them all to push the boundaries of music.

At least, he is spared hearing someone take credit for a song he wrote. None of his songs are on the album, instead replaced by close finalists that did not make the first cut. Some songs he has never heard of, and he presumes the guitarist wrote them. Not that he ever listens to them.

He walks past the calendar to grab the morning paper. Why he had marked his class canceled today makes sense. If his father were alive, he would be proud that Brian is finally in a career “worthy” of him. That is if he remembered who Brian was.

It is lonely, but his students are so bright and want to learn. He loves it, but god, he misses his old life.

Brian shakes his head. A year. Christ, it feels like he made the deal yesterday. He has survived it. He should not ruin it now. Today he can be sad, but tomorrow he must shove it all down and give a lecture on electromagnetic waves and their effect on the formation of galaxies.

And once more he spends the morning fighting the numbness that swirls around him like a particularly needy cat.

“Brrow!”

“Hello there Stevie,” he bends down to stroke the cat.

“Meh,” the cat raises on his back legs.

“Is it breakfast time?”

The tabby trots away towards her bowl, her bell breaking the early morning peace. She flicks her stub of a tail and sits expectantly. Brian grabs the food and dispenses the proper amount. Stevie brushes against his hand, attempting to knock more from the bag.

“Greedy girl,” he hums.

Freddie had always given his cats more than they needed. Oscar usually finished what the others left alone, unsurprising that the cat had turned into the lazy animal he had. Brian sniffs. Stevie looks up with her bright green eyes.

“I’m okay baby girl.”

“Mrow?”

He wipes the tears away and gives his cat two more pats on the side. Stevie returns to her food with gusto and Brian fills up his favored mug with lukewarm tap water. He pops bread into the toaster. The kitchen glows brighter with each moment the sun is in the sky.

The yellow tint pulls him into better days. Brian closes his eyes and thinks about the day tea wafted through the house and burned sausage turned his stomach more than properly prepared bacon. Even in the early morning, the house would not be silent. Sleepy grumbles and heavy footfalls. Someone humming. Rhythmic taps on the counter waiting for the bread to pop out of the toaster.

Brian grabs his, only toasted to light brown and thus not very hot and takes a small bite. Some crumbs fall to the floor, which Stevie sniffs at.

**“B, you eat like a bird. At least eat a _bite _of something else.”**

“I should be happy, huh girl.”

Stevie scratches her chin but then looks at him intently.

“I know I should be, but I hate this. There’s no point to anything. My students leave after a semester and I know I can’t love another. Maybe I should travel? But then what would I do with you?”

Unhelpful, Stevie flicks her stumpy tail again and wanders towards her bed in the living room. Brian finishes off his second piece of toast and refills his glass. Maybe he can catch up on some reading today. He moves into the living room where various papers, of songs and lecture notes, have taken over the table.

The TV crackles to life when he accidentally sits on the remote. It is some interview show, it would be interesting background noise.

“So why does Queen have a guitarist curse, as some have referred to it?”

“I wouldn’t call it a curse, no.”

Brian’s head whips up.

“We’re very particular about our sound, if we can’t get that sound then none of our music works.”

Roger is wearing a bright blue suit jacket top over a black button-up. It is something Brian has seen him before, maybe not this cut or that shade, but he looks stunning in it. His eyes are brought out by the color. Amazingly bright. His hands twist around each other, he is nervous with this interview. And alone.

“Particular? Can you describe what you mean?”

Roger frowns, “well. When you make music it’s all a very deliberate process. This song should sound like this, and the people we’ve worked with have been fantastic guitarists, but the album doesn’t sound like the way we’ve imagined it as a whole.”

Brian knows he should not feel relief at the band‘s obvious struggle. They are less of a household name, still famous, but they are not the powerhouses that they were coming out of the eighties. He glances at the Red Special who lacks her concert gleam and hasn’t been played (really pushed to her limits) in a year. She is judging him.

All his doubts about not fitting in with the band's new direction seem silly now. They cannot replace him like they cannot replace John or Roger or Freddie.

Shame that he cannot do anything with the epiphany now.

* * *

**Brian** tosses a few rocks from the step. It does nothing to ease the anger and hurt in his lungs. All he must do is get through the next few days, and they will be done with this album. They will be on tour and he can play songs he knows are fan favorites, songs where a guitarist has a place.

“I thought you’d be out here,” John comments dryly.

“And you came out anyway?”

“I did that a long time ago, or have you forgotten?”

He forgets that he is meant to be sulking and sends John an exhausted look, “I thought that was Roger’s joke?”

“Fair use,” John sits down next to him, “is there a reason you’re out here and not getting ready to pop the champagne when Freddie finishes his vocals?”

Were they that close to being done with this nightmare?

“Brian?”

“Sorry. It’s been a long studio session.”

John nods, “it has.”

They sit in silence. Brian picks up another stone before tossing it into the street. John mimics the action. He frowns, wondering what John wants. John does not say anything but picks up another rock and turns it in his palm.

“You know we’ll work solos into the show, at least to give us breaks. Playing new music isn’t the worst thing.”

Brian nods. What does it say about him that they think he would be more upset about losing solos than losing his closest companions? Although he is upset about losing the solos, it feels like he has been pushed to the side.

“Brian,” John sighs, “come back inside, please?”

He bites his lip. Unwilling to concede the ground he does not have.

“I know we haven’t,” John lets out a frustrated noise, “none of us have been our best this year. We can move past this, we always have.”

Brian nods slowly.

“Just, come back inside?”

John is putting the decision on him. He can walk out; he doubts that any of them would really blame him if he did. Brian does not want to though.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Yeah?” John asks breathlessly.

“Yeah –”

His head gets pulled to John, where they meet in perhaps their most passionate kiss of the year. Certainly, the first one that has not been tinged with leftover Studio Anger. He sighs happily and pulls himself closer to John. Strong hands wrap around the back of his neck.

Brian pulls away dazed.

“Sorry,” John clears his throat, “Freddie’s worked himself into thinking you were going to quit, and he got Roger to believe it and I think I was starting to, as well.”

“No. No. I thought you wanted me to quit.”

“God, no,” John rubs his thumb over the bridge of his cheek, “we would never want that. It seems like we need to have a long talk before the tour starts.”

“The makeup sex will be fantastic though,” Brian chuckles giving John another quick kiss on his cheek.

He laughs as he hears John sputter behind him. Things are not perfect, but he knows they never will be, but he also knows they will work to make it so.

* * *

Brian wonders what John’s reaction would be if he told him.

_“Hey John, I sold my happiness so that you and Roger could have Freddie back.”_

John would be heartbroken. Brian can picture that face with clarity because he has seen true heartbreak when Freddie had told them. The way his eyes would flutter, and his teeth dig into his bottom lip because it is not time to mourn _yet. _Then he would say in that quiet powerful voice of his:

_“Why?”_

Brian has not figured out yet if the why is meant to figure out the reason he was so willing to throw himself on the pyre or if it was more personal as in why he figures they would be happier with Freddie than him. To both, he cannot find an answer.

It was grief. He was grieving and had the chance to stop. Why would he not take it? Then again, he has never really stopped grieving because he has not been able to take Freddie in his arms and hold him. Brian also has not been able to figure out what he would do if he got to hold Freddie again.

Apologize? Confess? He will cry, he knows that much.

Does there need to be a why behind every action?

And Brian will never have to figure out the heavier why of his reasons behind giving up his happiness (at least that’s what he thinks is what he sacrificed) because he will never be near them again.

He starts sobbing, in his tiny bedsit. It feels like he is twenty years younger and lost in the enormity of the love he feels for his bandmates. Brian bites into his cheek to keep quiet despite the only living thing he will disturb is Stevie. The copper tang fills his mouth and he realizes that he has bitten too hard. A part of him waits for a heartbeat, waiting for someone to come in and wrap around him.

Promise him better days. Tug the confession out of him.

**“Brian, we’re here for you. Let us in.”**

He lays down on the bed. Tears still slipping down his face, but he is too exhausted to wipe them away.

* * *

John sort of feels like he is counting something, and he keeps counting one more or one less every time he finishes. The feeling is baffling and he cannot pinpoint when it started, but he will look at a room filled with his loved ones and think something is off. Other times he does not notice a thing.

Jim claps a hand on his shoulder, “penny for your thoughts?”

“I suppose.”

He thinks he is meant to be laughing at Roger and Freddie giggling on the couch over nothing. At least he knows he should be smiling fondly, but he has got that feeling again. Like there is something missing. Almost like he is overlooking a lamp he knows he has had for years.

“Are you okay?”

“Am I forgetting something?”

Jim frowns, “like what?”

“I don’t know. An important date? A meeting? Someone’s birthday?” John pauses, “did I forget to take out the trash?”

“No,” Jim squeezes, “I don’t think so. Roger would know better than I.”

He hums. Roger has now doubled over into Freddie, clutching at their singer’s shirt. Freddie’s head is thrown back in joy. John narrows his eyes; it is a familiar sight but he cannot shake the feeling.

“It’ll come to you if it’s important.”

“I hope so.”

The knowledge is on the edge of his brain, like smoke he can grasp it but not hold it.

A peel of laughter from Freddie shakes him out of his mood. His lips quirk up. Jim smiles at him. John wanders over to the back of the couch, a quick kiss on Freddie’s cheek.

“What’s got you two in fits?”

They try to stifle their laughter, but when Freddie and Roger look at each other they start giggling again. John wipes away the tears from the edge of their eyes, and something twists in his chest. Like he needs to be somewhere else, doing this for someone else. His hand stills, but Roger grabs it and places a kiss to each of his finger pads.

“Come join us.”

“And laugh like a maniac when nothing is funny?” He raises a brow.

“Just come here, you’re grumpy,” Freddie tugs at his other hand.

“Why should I sit with you if you’re going to insult me?”

“You _are_ grumpy,” Jim calls.

“I thought you were on my side!”

“I am,” Jim shrugs.

Roger cackles. Freddie can hang onto his composure barely, his eyes suddenly serious and hands gentle.

“Do you feel alright? You’re pale.”

“Yeah,” John takes his freed hand and runs it through his hair, well the motion since his hair is not long enough for that anymore, “I think I’m just tired from the tour still.”

Freddie grimaces. The tour had not been their best and the guitarist quitting partway through, so they had to force a tech on stage. John wonders if it is a sign that they should give this up. That they have had their moment of fame.

“You know…”

Roger takes a deep breath at Freddie’s serious tone.

“Maybe we should make a pilgrimage to where this all started.”

“Imperial?” Roger tilts his head.

“Yes! Get in touch with our roots. Plenty of artists do it!”

John frowns, “but we aren’t writing things yet. I thought it was for inspiration.”

Freddie shrugs.

“What happened to never looking back?” Roger asks.

“It’ll sound crazy.”

“Freddie, we wrote a song where we tried to figure out how to make a guitar sound like a cat meowing.”

“Go on,” Jim prompts.

“I feel like we need to go there. Like something is going to happen if we do.”

John mouths Imperial. They had played their first true concert there, but it does not hold much meaning beyond that. He cannot think of any popular musicians coming from there and only a few of his friends attended.

“Yeah, maybe,” Roger is staring at the wall like it has some sort of answer, “someday. Probably in the summer once uni lets out.”

John grimaces at the thought of being mobbed by uni students asking for photos and autographs. He does not like it when they are at events for it. Roger reaches up and pats him on the arm, still apparently figuring out the answers of the universe on the wall paneling.

“I think it sounds like a good idea,” Jim says.

Freddie grins, “that’s two resounding yeses!”

John nods slowly. Who knows, maybe Imperial is exactly what they need.

* * *

**John** is auditioning. For a band. Queen he thinks. They play well. Their performances are exceptional. Not that he has the extravagance of the singer or the passion of the drummer. The guitarist blended in with the music, and John thinks he can find common ground with him.

Being part of the background is something that he is used to.

The drummer calls his name. He rubs the handle of his case with his thumb and stands. John has never seen the drummer up close and his throat closes because he is outstandingly beautiful.

“Coming mate?”

“Right, sorry.”

He steps in and sees the singer. The guitarist is looking away from them, fiddling with his instrument. John can only make out the weird shape of the body and the deep red color.

It is not the guitar he remembers seeing. Maybe he just has two? One for practice and one for shows? But even identical models can sound differently, John shrugs. It is none of his business how the guitarist chooses to operate.

“Name?”

“John Richard Deacon.”

His eyes are drawn to the lanky figure that still has not turned around. Has the guitarist already picked their bassist and his is a formality? Freddie leans forward eager to hear what he plays.

John’s fingers dance on the strings. In a combination he has never even dreamed of before. He does not know this song. Still, it makes Roger sit up straight and Freddie grin widely. The guitarist has not looked at him.

Why does he want the guitarist to look at him? Who even is the guitarist? John keeps playing. Repeating stanzas trying to get a reaction out of the figure. He plays a deliberately wrong set of chords while keeping with the song. Since this is the guitarist’s song then he should react to someone changing it. Deep irritated anger raises in him at the lack of attention.

Roger and Freddie only clap excitedly. Who the hell is this guitarist?

* * *

Brian has spent a lot of time thinking about alternate universes lately. Where they come from and in what ways does a universe become an alternate. Is there a singular perfect universe and the rest are the alternates? Does this count as an alternate universe?

This is not _his_ universe. _His_ consisted of playing music and making it with his soulmates. Here, he is Doctor Brian May, a well-loved physics professor known for his witty humor and kind nature. And it is not to say that he hates it, only that this is not his life. A stranger has taken his place on stage and he has taken some poor person’s dream job.

Truthfully, he does not feel like Brian May, guitarist of Queen, either. He has not touched the Red Special in a year and a half.

Is he in some transitory period before he settles into this new universe? When all he can do is think about what he has been. The woman had said he keeps his memories like it is a boon.

Most days, it is. He can place himself in the music, and not just feel like another fan pining after Rock Gods. His heart knows that they loved him, he can be happy with that. He should be happy that Freddie has been given a second chance. The guilty feeling settles heavily in his stomach that he _isn’t _happy with what he has been given.

He runs a wet rag over his face, the sweat beading down his back. The late afternoon air sticky with expectations. His mind brings back those days where they all laid on the floor in various stages of undress, trying to be cool. Inevitably they were all drawn back together in a pile of overheated limbs as though they could not go an hour without touching another.

He has proved that theory wrong. A year and a half since he has even spoken a word to them. Brian looks at himself in the mirror and wonders if they would recognize him even if he had their memories. His skin is sallow and pulled taught over sunken cheekbones, the underneath of his eyes has been stained with purple and a permanent puffiness to them. Even his hair has changed for all he has kept it the same, the once dark curls have lightened and grayed.

He is aging. That is to be expected as he hits the stride of mid-life. Except he does not truly know the man in the mirror. Just once he wishes he could see that look in his eyes he has caught by mistake. The one where he is utterly at peace with life because he is doing what he loves with the people he loves.

Theoretically, he is in an alternate universe. It is possible.

Space is fascinating but broken down to be understood, it only is numbers. Distances and chemical makeups. Theories that can only be discussed seriously if there is proof behind it. There is wonder about it, but it is less about the beauty and more about secrets it holds. Brian knows that he could not have spent his life after his Ph.D. researching it because he loves all the possibilities there are, but he does not want to ruin the magic by digging around for enough proof.

But how else is he supposed to spend the latter half of his life now that he does not have his first love?

He glances over to where the Red Special has been moved from her stand and into a guitar case. It is sealed like a coffin. Brian hates that he has done that to her but he has not played her in so long. He is more worried about what the dust would do to her delicate system. She was never made to be displayed, built so that a teenage boy could have his dream of owning an electric guitar.

Stevie jumps on the couch behind him, purring loudly before settling on the spot next to him. He reaches up to scratch under her chin.

“I should take the Old Lady out, one more time at least.”

“Mrow?”

“You’d like her, she sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard.”

His head threads with solos he has played a lifetime ago. Each one he knows by heart, but he does not remember how he played it. The Red Special gives under his hands as he urges her to sing. John’s bass thrumming beside him. Roger guiding them in time. Freddie enchanting them all, letting them forget about the world beyond for just a few hours.

He loves playing. His hands twitch with faint muscle memory. Maybe he can finally give that last little bit of music he has in him to the word, even if no one is listening if he plays her one last time.

And maybe he would finally be able to convince himself that he can move on.

* * *

**Freddie** is tugging at him. Guiding him along. He winces as he slips on the uneven ground.

“Please let me see. If I break an ankle, we’re all in trouble.”

“Don’t worry, just trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Brian yelps as he trips again, “I don’t trust my walking ability without my vision.”

“We’re nearly there. Only 100 more meters! The ground levels out.”

“Freddie…”

“Please? I want to really make this special.”

He can never say no to that tone. Brian sighs and ignores Freddie’s quiet celebration. Besides, he has a feeling it is going to be worth the stumbles since he knows Roger and John were also in on it. Freddie squeezes his hands and Brian squeezes back.

It was only a short walk, and Freddie finally drops his hands, “okay, eyes open!”

“Blindfold,” he says.

“Right, sorry.”

Brian blinks as the blindfold comes off. He does not get what he is seeing at first, but then his eyes adjust, and he melts. There is a picnic table, covered in a red and white checked blanket. A basket on the edge, Roger and John sit opposite of each other. They are both overdressed for a picnic. Roger in a deep red button up and John is wearing a tie.

“Freddie, what?”

Freddie is also overdressed, but then again, he usually is.

He feels Freddie guide his gaze upwards. The sky is less polluted by light this far out of London, and it is a new moon which brings out even more stars. A streak flies across the sky.

“Oh, tonight is the shower!”

Freddie beams, “you’ve only been talking about it for a month.”

Brian is giddy with happiness and he cannot stop it from overflowing into the kiss he shares with Freddie.

“I know! But I thought you all tuned me out when I went on about it.”

Freddie pats his cheek in reproach, “none of that. We do listen.”

“Sort of,” Roger says, “I kind of get distracted by your eyes.”

Brian flushes. Freddie laughs and kisses him on the cheek again.

“And we don’t forget about the things important to you, so if we have to sit out here all night. We will.”

John reaches in and pulls out a plate, “we have plenty of cheese toast.”

Brian laughs loudly, “I take it you were in charge of the menu.”

“There’s some fruit too. Some Carrots.”

He sits down and turns his eyes skyward. The shower is building in intensity. There are a few more streaks. Brian cannot keep the smile down, even when he hears a few low comments from Roger about how much of a nerd he is.

Cheese toast is pushed into his hands.

“Ea. The sky is going to be there for a while.”

He does not tear his eyes away from the sky but for a second. Freddie is sitting across from him, twirling a strawberry, eyes on him. John is happily leaning into him eating his own cheese toast, looking towards the sky with squinted eyes. Brian carefully gestures towards the area that the meteors are falling from.

Roger, on the other hand, is staring straight at him. Brian extends his legs so he can tangle them together. He gets a slight smile in return.

“Really, Brian. We care about what’s important to you.”

* * *

They finally get to Imperial on John’s birthday of all things. Freddie cannot help the giddy excitement, only dampened by the fact that Jim is back in Ireland helping with a cousin’s recovery from surgery. Something is going to happen and it is going to be extraordinary. Like the first time he played with Roger and John.

Roger walks at a much slower pace, eyes darting around the grounds. He has been in a searching mood for over a year now. Freddie frowns, wondering what it is that he could be looking for because he knows Roger does not know either.

“This is the way, right John?”

The bassist nods, hands deep in his pocket and head down. As though he is trying to avoid being noticed.

“We’ll only spend an hour here, and then we’ll get to your birthday dinner.”

“Am I just getting a dinner?” John wiggles his eyebrows.

Roger snorts, “you’ve gotten worse as you age.”

Freddie remembers a time when John could barely stutter out dirty talk outside of the bedroom. It gives him a sharp thrill to know that John still wants them despite how old they have grown.

“We need to turn here,” John says instead of admitting to Roger’s charge.

He looks and sees the hall that their “first” concert was in. Still an impressive building, but it seems to be less intimidating than when they hauled their gear into the building. A few summer students wander around the base. The gray clouds of rain make the building almost glow.

“Well, are we going to look at it, or go in?” Roger asks, his eyes trained on the door.

Freddie wonders if he feels it too. That tug from somewhere deep in his bones. It feels like the siren call from old sailor’s tales. He reaches out and grips both Roger’s and John’s hands. They twine together and some of the expectation leaks out of him and into them. He feels it in the way John shifts from foot to foot and how Roger squeezes. Freddie maps their calluses by memory.

After another second they start walking to the building. A few students notice them, but one girl stops her friends from coming near. Freddie smiles and nods gratefully. There is an urge deep in him that if he does not go into this building _now, _he will miss something incredible.

“There are some decent people,” John says quietly.

He nods. John can usually get away with not being noticed when he is out in public but with either him or Roger his chances drop and the two of them together practically mean John is going to have to sit through accidentally rude fan questions.

Roger tugs impatiently, “let’s go do this so we can eat.”

“Always thinking with your stomach, Rog,” Freddie says.

Roger sticks his tongue out but takes the lead. Freddie is content to let the blond lead because even John’s steps are increasingly hesitant.

“It’s just a building.”

John frowns, “with a lot of meaning to us.”  
Freddie sighs. He understands that, but it feels like the moments before a show and not the good ones. The ones that launch him into a panic attack that delays the show a half an hour or more. Roger squeezes again.

“John, where do you want to go?”

“Hm, I was in the mood for Italian,” John says.

“Oh, that sounds fabulous. That little place on main?”

“With the toasted garlic bread? Yes, please.”

They stand in front of the door. Roger inhales and pushes it open. Nothing happens. The door swings open to reveal the same long hallway that had been there before. The concert hall is at the end of it. A few brightly colored posters line the bulletin board, mostly searching for test subjects. A few for a bandmate.

“Think I can get in with… Cry Dolls? They say they need a rock and roll drummer.”

Freddie snorts at the pink poster Roger has pointed out.

“I don’t know, you might not be rock and roll enough for them.”

“Certainly not at your age, rock is only for the twenty-year-olds.”

Roger scowls at the reminder. Hell, they all would probably be turned away because of their age if the band did not have any idea who they are. Doubtful, but possible. Freddie pokes at the slight pudge in his stomach, his most prominent sign of aging.

Roger bats as his hand, “you’re stunning. Quit it.”

John hums in agreement. He is walking faster now towards the end of the hallway. They are only a few meters from the door but the soft hum of an electric guitar leaks underneath the heavy wood doors. Freddie shares a look with Roger. His mouth goes dry.

None of them want to open the door, but at the same time, Freddie wants to know. Who is playing? What does the song sound like? Is it him?

Roger is the one that takes the leap for them. He opens the door enough to poke his head in. Freddie pushes him through the door so he can see. At first, he does not see anyone or hear anything. Roger stands next to him with a furrowed brow.

The mysterious guitarist steps out from behind a stacked speaker. Freddie feels his throat close. _It’s him! It’s him! Him!Him!Him!_

_My god, we’ve found him._

He starts crying, but he cannot figure out the cause. Hell, he does not know why he is reacting like this. The guitarist has not resumed his song yet, but Freddie takes a step closer.

Music floods the hall. He feels the hurt in the guitar more than he hears it. The playing is technically perfect, each note crisp and clear and bellied by a tone that Freddie cannot remember ever hearing a guitar make. It is all very Rock n’ Roll. His eyes close and he just takes a moment to breathe in the playing.

When he opens his eyes, he watches the guitarist. His movements are precise and stiff, but his body language gives Freddie enough of a hint that this man is familiar on the stage. No. Familiar is not the word. At home. This man is at home on the stage.

Roger stares slack-jawed, fingers flipping with the count. It must kill the drummer to not steal onto the kit bolted to the ground. John is still. His eyes trace the movement of the guitar rather than the guitarist.

_It’s him! _Freddie’s brain reminds him. This must be the guitarist they have been looking for since Queen began.

When the song draws to a natural close, notes sustaining with little waver, Freddie begins to clap. The guitarist jumps. From this distance, Freddie cannot make out many of his facial features. Which he changes by walking down the middle walkway.

His frown deepens. The guitarist looks like he has seen a ghost when he looks like the ghost himself. Freddie is not certain that he just looks like that, but the skin looks too pale and the eyes too bruised for it to be natural. Hazel eyes flit through emotions too fast for Freddie to gather them.

“Brilliant,” Roger breathes.

The guitarist opens his mouth and closes it. Freddie wonders if he is a fan until the guitarist starts crying. Which is an odd reaction. John is on the stage crouching in front of him. Freddie shares a concerned look with Roger because John rarely approaches new people. Much less to comfort them.

Freddie is next to climb the stage, hand hovering above the guitarist's shoulder.

“It’s okay, dear, I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

The guitarist shakes his head, collecting himself alarmingly well for a man who falls to the ground sobbing.

“Sorry –”

Freddie stares at the man. The voice is warm with a gentle lilt. Exactly like the voice he knew would join their band someday. Hazel eyes swim with emotion, but they are bright with intelligence. _It’s him!_

Who is him?

“Ah, but how can I help you?”

Freddie shakes his head, missing the apologetic speech which has John grimacing and Roger staring at the guitarist like he has found something.

“What’s your name, dove?”

The guitarist’s lip wavers before he clears his throat and once more pulls himself together impressively (and worryingly) well again.

“Brian May.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a lecturer, here, actually,” Brian says softly.

“That’s all?”

Freddie sends a glare at Roger.

“Seriously, you’re just a lecturer? Didn’t you ever want to be in a band? Were you in a band?

Brian clears his throat, “I was.”

Freddie waits for the elaboration. When none comes, he shrugs. They have only just met after all.

“What do you say about becoming Queen’s lead guitarist?”

John and Roger lean forward waiting for Brian’s answer. He takes a minute to look the three of them over (and god how he wishes they had found Brian twenty years ago). Brian smiles, bright and breathtaking. Freddie is knocked back by the pure elation in it, more joy than a simple offer should bring.

“I’d love nothing more.”

“Fantastic!” Freddie grins.

“Do you have more?” Roger is practically vibrating, “songs like that?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I do. A few actually. Pretty well and finished too, for a band.”

“Hah!” Roger preens, “I knew you couldn’t just be a lecturer!”

John stares at Brian like he is figuring out a puzzle. Freddie frowns, John will tell them soon enough if it’s important.

* * *

**Freddie** strokes the cat that has made her home in their flower bushes. He has spent the greater part of the week sneaking her scraps of fabrics. Placed a box far enough away that the curious observer will not see her. She is going to have her kittens soon. It seems Freddie has won her trust for the time being.

He hums a nonsense song. One he must have heard a hundred times before. The words stick behind his teeth like he cannot recall them. Now that he is thinking about it. He does not know anything about this song. Not what key it is written in. Not the melody. But he is humming it.

Freddie glances around. He does not know this garden either. There is a barn off in the distance and cows in the field. So this is not London Proper. God knows where he has found himself. The cat yells for him to resume his scratching.

“You know where we’re at don’t you, Mama?”

“I know where you are supposed to be,” the warm voice is back.

Freddie tries to turn around. His gaze stays focused on the hills beyond. The cat is sunning herself on warm dirt.

“I much rather stay away from Roger’s tantrums.”

Roger and he have not fought this month. He does not know why he is saying this.

“We’re behind schedule. To keep ourselves out of debtor’s prison I suggest we finish the record.”

“I’m too pretty to be arrested.”

He melts into the laugh. Once more Freddie tries to turn around.

“Why don’t you work on your cheese song, –.”

What? What is this person’s name? His ears are ringing. Why does he not know this person’s name? He should. Why does he not –?

“Freddie?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right --, we do need to get back on track.”

* * *

Brian is the perfect fit they have been searching for. Freddie knew that he would find him! He does not give ground easily in the studio but will _eventually _concede a point. His writing is phenomenal, too. Sad but beautiful and very personal.

If Freddie had to guess, he would say it takes everything in Brian to introduce a song to them. His hands shake every time and he bites his lip. Brian watches them record like he cannot believe that he is here.

With Brian, Freddie thinks it is time to bring their magnum opus into the world.

“Freddie, what the bloody hell is this?” Roger scans the sheet, “I know we’ve done some experimental shit in the past, but six minutes? And an operatic section?”

John hums, bopping to the temporary rhythm he has given the song. Brian has a white-knuckled grip on the sheet music. Freddie has given him full range for the solo, and his mouth is practically salivating at thought of what Brian could do with it.

“It’ll work,” Brian says, quietly but certain.

“Yeah?” Roger seems doubtful.

“Let’s just record it, see how we feel,” Brian urges.

John shrugs, “I’m game.”

“I think this is _it._”

Roger looks between the three of them, his gaze lingers on Brian.

“Okay.”

“Thank you, Roggie!”

Freddie moves to the piano, more than fully prepared to play the song in full for them, well the piano portion at least. John and Roger gather around the piano, sheet music in hand. Brian leans against the far wall, watching with that too knowing too elated gaze.

He plays through the opening bars twice clearing his throat and starting the song over. Freddie nods at his bandmates and then dives into the song. For as long as he has had this song in his head, he is almost nervous playing it for the first time. He knows it is great, but on the off chance his bandmates do not see it, then he knows it will not get off the ground.

“Mama just killed a man…”

Freddie knows he has them with the first words. Roger taps his thigh in time and John looks up from the music. Brian still has that infuriatingly peaceful and knowing look on his face. He presses forward, falling into the music.

A spell falls over the room.

“Sometimes I wish I never been born at all!”

Brian jumps into the song almost on cue, his fingers dancing across the strings as though he has played this a hundred times. Incredibly composed for only having just heard the song. Freddie cannot help but wonder why Brian is crying.

* * *

In the almost thirty years he has been with Queen, and that is an impressive number, John has grown accustomed to weird things. Freddie and Roger’s constant synchronicity. People loving him because they love his music. Loving more than one person. Being in an open relationship was the hardest to adjust to.

Ronnie, bless that woman, had given her permission for him to be with Roger and Freddie at the beginning and later Jim. Since he has been a proper father and husband, at least in Ronnie’s eyes, she has said nothing.

_“John, I love you. You love me, and Freddie and Roger and Jim. I think it’s beautiful you can love so much. And besides, I don’t have to worry about you running off with some stranger if you have those two while you’re on tour.”_

So, no, John is not exactly surprised when he looks at Brian (bathed in starlight and happy, one of the kid’s flower crowns in his hair) one night and his heart goes ‘!’. Roger has been gone for the guitarist since he created the guitar solo for Bohemian Rhapsody. John is certain that Freddie has been in love with the guitarist before they even knew he existed.

What bothers him about Brian, beyond his casual arrogance and ease on stage, is how _familiar _he feels. John thinks about the lamp that he has had forever but his just noticing again for the first time. In six months, Brian has become part of their forever. Not that anyone has bothered talking with anyone. John sighs, they are grown men. Well past their youth and they are still acting like school children around their crush.

He is starting to think that Brian might be getting the wrong idea: That they do not want him. Which is absolute bullshit because they waited over half their lives _for _him. John knows he is going to have to do all the heavy lifting, but first, he must talk about it to Ronnie.

“You want to ask Brian?”

She tilts her head, “I thought you already had?”

“We should’ve as soon as he signed the contract,” John kisses Ronnie’s palm.

“Of course, I won’t have a problem with him. He’s so good with the kids. Another hand never hurts.”

He leans back in his chair.

“What’s the matter, my love?”

“I don’t get it. Obviously, he is meant to be a part of this, but why so many years without him? And why have we waited so long to love him openly?”

Ronnie kisses him on the cheek, “my answer for the first one is that fate is very strange. Be glad you met him at all. As for the second, for all you three write love songs, it tends to surprise you like being hit with a sack of bricks.”

“Should I be offended?” John laughs.

“Never.”

Permission granted. John does not waste any time in getting to Brian’s flat. Why he kept the tiny bedsit will remain a mystery to John. Maybe he should have brought Freddie and Roger along, but then maybe that would have alarmed Brian. Besides, he is well within their established rules so far.

“John?” Brian blinks when he opens the door.

John loses his thoughts for a moment. Brian is dressed in a baggy jumper and flannel pants that are long enough to cover his feet. His curls are even more wild than normal. It is such a stunning image John cannot imagine never seeing it again.

“Can I come in?”

Brian pales but stands aside. John raises an eyebrow, wondering if he caught Brian in the middle of something. He realizes that this is the first time he has seen where their guitarist runs off to after rehearsals and recordings. Save for a few stacked books and the Red Special, John would think this flat is made up for a house showing. There are no pictures or artwork or even a potted plant.

Like Brian just exists here. John finds he hates it. There should be pictures that Brian took hanging on the walls and obnoxious hedgehog memorabilia and music and stars. He turns to see Brian frowning.

“John?”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Ah, two years come November.”

John looks back at the flat. He cannot see any trace of Brian except for those spots he saw earlier.

“Didn’t plan on staying around?”

For some reason, his stomach sinks at Brian’s guilty face. As though the guitarist did not mean moving to a more permanent home. Fear surges through his veins. He swallows, there is no reason for him to jump to that conclusion.

Brian clears his throat, “when I moved in here. I had just lost the people that I loved the most. It was my choice, but I didn’t know if London was right for me anymore.”

It did not work to alleviate the fear John still has, but it is a little comforting. Brian not wanting to stay in London because it did not feel like home is a better thought.

“Right. Do you want to sit down?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” Brian smiles.

Words should be first. John knows, but the softness Brian is emanating draws him in. The way his curls are still so carefree even in the lightness of aging. Late afternoon sunlight hits hazel eyes and draws out the warmth in them.

There is love in his gaze and John will not deny himself it any longer. He leans forward, their lips brush. As much as he wants to deepen it, something seizes in his spine. John stills frowns and then tightens his grip on Brian’s shirt as pain washes over him.

Things that had never ever made sense slot into place. He _knows _Brian. They were soulmates once. John cannot figure out how he _forgot_ **_Brian_**. The last part of his heart. Why the world acted like they did not know him.

There is a sudden need in him to see Freddie. His mind is screaming at him that Freddie is on his deathbed. But no. Freddie had lived gotten better. They had forgotten Brian though.

Brian grimaces but his eyes are sparkling with joy. John tightens his grip and falls into Brian’s chest. He will figure everything out in a moment, but right now he wants to be close to Brian. Because _somehow, _he forgot him. That means for two years, Brian had not been his.

It curls in his stomach. He had not been _Brian’s _for two years. Fuck. Brian must have remembered. Then why did he not seek them out? John looks up, and Brian looks down. He sees… guilt? Love and joy. Sadness. Exhaustion.

He leans up to kiss the bad away.

“Brian, what the hell?”

“We probably should sit down for this. Being drunk might help.”

“No,” John says automatically, “we aren’t doing this drunk.”

Brian winces, “okay. After then.”

The worry growing in him. Brian rarely resorts to alcohol for serious conversations. Which is strange because the Brian he has known for the past two years always seemed to have a glass with him. John wonders what else has changed that he should have known was not right.

They sit next to each other on the couch. Their knees brush and it sends happy sparks through John’s body. It is like his body is touched starved, but for Brian. Then again, he probably is.

“So, you know me?”

“Of course, I know you.”

Brian shakes his head, “no. I mean do you _know _me?”

John feels something build behind his heart. Brian almost expected to be forgotten about. Why?

“You wrote the Prophet’s Song because of a fever dream you had while you were sick with hep. We originally had it on A Night at the Opera.”

He does not know why that is the example his mind jumps to, then again Brian had not told him he was dying that time either.

Brian smiles. His head bobbing excitedly, but his eyes are sad and guilty still. John takes a deep breath because getting upset now will guarantee no answers. He watches Brian look at where the Red Special is laid in a case. A cat jumps in his lap.

“What?”

“This is Stevie.”

John strokes her automatically. She must have been a stray, judging by the few scratches that have left ridges in her reddish fur.

“Hello,” he says.

Stevie purrs loudly and curls up on his thighs. Brian watches her.

“Freddie would love her.”

They have been talking about adopting a few new cats.

“That’s why I kept her. She hid under my porch one night. It was storming so I brought her inside and in the morning when I took her to the vet, I found that I didn’t want to let her go.”

Brian inhales shakily, “she made me feel like I still had a connection to Freddie. To you all.”

“Brian,” John grabs his hand, “please.”

“You won’t like it.”

“Probably not.”

“I – Freddie died. And I _hurt_. We all did. I wasn’t going to – I couldn’t stop myself from falling into that pit.”

“Bri…”

“Let me get this all out,” Brian pulls his hand away.

He shrinks in on himself and John _hates _it.

“I didn’t know what to do. So, I didn’t do anything. You and Roger, you both were devastated. Queen was gone. I didn’t have a choice.”

John furrows his brow. He knows that Freddie got deathly ill, and for some reason, he has the faint impression of Freddie dying but he does not remember any of that clearly. Brian, god Brian, he knows what that feels like.

“Call it divine intervention but she gave me a deal. Freddie alive, healthy for you and Roger and Jim.”

Brian bites his cheek and looks away. John does not know what to do, everything in Brian’s posture screams to be left alone but Brian being left alone usually makes things worse. He reaches out and touches Brian’s upper arm.

“What did you have to give?” John asks quietly.

“_You._”

“I don’t follow.”

Brian doubles over, his knees tight to his chest. John moves so that he is kneeling in front of Brian. Their eyes meet, and John is knocked breathless by the sheer pain.

“Brian?”

“I had to give up you and Roger and Jim. Everyone. Everyone would forget about me, but Freddie would be alive. I thought it was a good deal.”

John leans back from the shock. He feels so many things, he does not know what to feel.

“I gave up everything.”

“What the hell?” John says quietly.

Anger. He knows how to deal with anger.

“What?”

“The hell Brian? Did you honestly work it into your head that we’d rather have Freddie over you? You know what this is going to do to him when he finds out?”

Brian shakes his head.

“And yes, I would be devastated, will be devastated, when he dies, but I would never choose him over you. I could never choose. Neither would Roger. We’re all equal! The fact that you would even consider – I thought you were meant to be the smart one!”

He should probably stop while he’s ahead.

“Did you think that you knew best? Knew what I and Roger wanted? We would _never _want to choose between you two! And that fact that you did that without talking to us!”

“You wouldn’t talk to me!” Brian cuts in, “you said that there was no Queen and then you isolated yourself. Roger couldn’t go an hour without breaking down. I didn’t want you to choose, so I didn’t make you!”

“And we would’ve healed! We would’ve hurt, and probably never stopped hurting, but someday the sadness wouldn’t be as bad! The fact that you think we wouldn’t be able to get over it? Get over yourself, Brian!”

Brian stands, as though to yell, John stands as well, prepared to fight back. The anger is heavy in his body. He needs to step back. Get out of the room. Brian just deflates though, fully onto the couch and head into his hands. John remains standing because he does not know what is happening.

“Yeah. Maybe we could have moved on. I see that now. I think now that _at least I would still have two. _Except when I made the deal, I couldn’t _see _that.”

Brian sniffles and John’s heart shatters.

“I was lost in a maze of grief and I couldn’t find the way out. Couldn’t even dream of the way out. There wasn’t a future of Queen. I had no guarantee of a future of our relationship.”

“Brian…”

John does not know what to say. He wants to say that he would never let that happen. Except he has but he does not remember doing so. A part of him wants to argue that no matter how much he hurts he would not push his loved ones away. That is exactly what he does, though, when he does hurt.

“I wouldn’t…” he says weakly.

Brian lifts his head. Hazel eyes are dimmed with wicked exhaustion. John bites his lip knowing that the words were more for him than Brian. After all, Brian apparently knows this better than him. He hates it. Hates it so much.

“What? Going to promise to not leave me alone again?” The bitter tone hurts, but John is relieved.

“And the deal, it wasn’t about you entirely. Don’t be so self-righteous.” Brian says.

“I couldn’t see a way out. And maybe I should have figured it out. But the only two options I could see were taking that bargain or throwing myself off a fucking bridge.”

John wants Brian to be angry. He craves for them to be fighting. The anger melts away into fear. Fear that he could have lost Brian. Scared that there is a power out there that can make him forget the most important people in his life and he _would not notice._

“Brian.”

Brian looks up.

John breaks down. He loses his balance and stumbles forward into Brian’s chest. He is sobbing and making a mess on Brian’s shirt, but he does not know what to do. What was just confided to him? He cannot process that. That Brian would even consider – that any of them would get to that point. He knows Brian’s always suffered harder and longer than any of them, even when there was no “apparent” reason (John knows the struggle well himself).

It is unhealthy, to love so much that they would give up their happiness and they will have to talk about that. Granted, it only matters if Brian comes home with him.

John brings himself onto Brian’s lap. The man steadies him automatically. He tries to force air into his lungs but it just becomes a rattling wheeze.

“I didn’t think we’d ever have to deal with this,” Brian says softly.

He pulls away, the air is still hard to get into his lungs, but he must make sure Brian understands.

“You idiot,” he says, “we knew – know something was off.”

Brian frowns.

“I kept thinking I forgot something, Roger kept searching for something,” John says reverently, running his hands down Brian’s face.

He is memorizing it in case something else happens.

“Freddie always knew we’d find you again, but he didn’t know it was you we were looking for.”

Brian leans into the touch _finally. _

“I didn’t think –”

“You didn’t.”

Brian nods, “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I wish I could’ve let you know that you could’ve spoken to me. Or Roger. You know he’ll drop everything for you.”

“I didn’t want to make that whole situation about me. You know? Oh, poor Brian, can’t stand not being in the center of attention.”

John taps him lightly on the cheek, “we wouldn’t think that. Out of anyone in the world, we know how you are Brian.”

He brings Brian to his shoulder. John is scared. He is so many other things, but right now he is terrified.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” John tugs his hand through Brian’s curls, “right now, don’t apologize. When we talk. Then you can.”

“I didn’t think it would hurt you so much.”

“Brian! It’s like finding out that two of my lovers have died.”

John kisses him tenderly on the forehead, “and I’m so very relieved I still have both.”

* * *

Freddie jumps when John tosses a very distraught Brian into his room. John gives Brian a sharp look.

“Kiss him.”

Freddie sputters, “what? John, we haven’t talked about –”

“Trust me.”

Brian grimaces, but it does not look like he is rejecting him. Freddie stands and crosses the room, Brian looks small drawn into himself the way he is. John is standing outside of the room. None of this makes any sense, but he is sure it will.

He leans up just enough to chastely kiss Brian on the lips.

His spine burns and his chest feels as though it is being crushed. When he opens his eyes, everything shifts back into focus. _It’s him! _Freddie stares at Brian, not understanding anything that is happened.

“What on Earth did you do?”

Brian shrugs and tilts his head towards the bed. John shuts the door as he steps back.

“Brimi. What did you do?”

“I couldn’t do it,” he says softly.

Freddie pulls the familiar body to him. Brian shakes but does not sob. He runs his hands all over the well-mapped frame. Cupping Brian’s face frequently so their eyes could meet. Somehow, he understands it but does not at the same time.

Brian looks as though he has gone seven rounds with the devil. The answer will come soon enough, he suspects. John knows (and they have likely already discussed it) and Roger is going to find out. Freddie runs a thumb over Brian’s cheekbones. Glad to have the strength to do so again, and the familiarity to have permission for the act.

“I’m sorry, Fred.”

Freddie hushes him, “don’t.”

“I broke my promise.”

“I won’t hold it against you.”

“No!”

Brian shakes again, but it is almost as if his body does not have any tears. Strange, given that he knows Brian is so prone to letting emotion overwhelm him. Freddie cannot imagine what the past two years have done to his sweet Brimi. He knows what it is to pine after someone you cannot have, but he does not possess the knowledge of what it feels like to pine after someone you have already had.

“It is okay to be selfish,” he says after some time.

“I hurt everyone.”

Freddie hums. That is the truth. He does not know what spurred Brian on, but obviously, a deal was made to reverse something that he fears asking Brian about will break what has already been repaired. It has something to do with him, but all his returned memories have given him are his boys at their breaking point and him being too weak to repair them.

He will be Brian’s safe haven for now.

“You found your way back to us,” he whispers, “we found you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Everything else? We can figure that out. John doesn’t hate you. Roger could never.”

“I’m sorry,” Brian repeats.

“I forgive you.”

Freddie does not know what he is forgiving, but he knows that he does forgive Brian. He knows Brian would never act out of maliciousness. Arrogance, maybe. Self-pity, yes. But never to wound.

For all Brian likes to overthink things, he is quick to action. Freddie loves that of him. That Brian can agonize over an awkward introduction for weeks, but he did not once hesitate to drop out of college for Queen. He has tried to curb him of that self-sacrificing streak if anything he should let the others give something up for him once and awhile.

“Freddie, I want to touch you.”

He looks down. Hazel eyes are swimming with remorse and regret, love and elation too. Freddie cannot find what he is looking for.

“Brian, I don’t think you should make that kind of claim.”

As much as his body missed Brian these past two years, fucking away problems tends to never solve them. Although he has done that enough times with them, that Brian must think that they have to, in order to be okay in his mind.

Brian bites his lip and looks away. Freddie catches his hand.

“We can be here, together.”

Brian looks hesitant. Freddie leans back with the guitarist in his arms. He always winces as Brian’s shoulder digs into his soft belly, but now the shoulder feels bonier. He knows that Brian looking like a ghost is not how he is supposed to look. For the first time, Freddie does not know what token he can give that would let Brian know that they are okay.

This is not something a pretty song or a mixtape of guitar solos can fix. It will not be fixed; Freddie thinks with dread. Whatever Brian has done has permanently wounded him and it seems it scared John.

“What did you do?” He asks again, not really expecting (or trying to get) an answer.

“In another world, where you die. I break a promise to you.”

Freddie cannot imagine what he demanded of Brian that the guitarist would be unable or unwilling to do. He tilts the head up.

“You made me promise that I wouldn’t be held back by your death. I tried. There wasn’t anything. No other promise to live up to. No future goal.”

Freddie squeezes Brian’s offered hand. Cold dread squeezes his heart at the implication.

“Brian…”

“John already told me I’m an idiot.”

“I imagine so,” Freddie hums.

He wants to yell at Brian. Demand a complete explanation. Demand that what he thinks Brian is implying is not the truth. In the future he will, when he has enough time to gather his thoughts in ways that will not destroy this fragile thing they are rebuilding between them all.

Roger is sure to replace everything with stronger material if John is the one that figures out what needs to be fixed. Jim will make everything beautiful again. Freddie knows it is his job to put in the temporary patches. Keep Brian from slipping through their grasp like a falling star. He does this for each of his loves, but every so often Brian needs it more.

Instead, he says, “that world doesn’t exist any longer, so I can’t really expect you to keep those promises. This world is the one that matters.”

That is not exactly right. In this world, Brian May only joined Queen in the late early 90s, but he remembers having young-and-twenty-something Brian to curl around. They are the same world.

“You cannot undo it, but you can learn to live with it.”

Brian nods and brings himself to tuck under Freddie’s chin. The great mysteries of his boys never cease, like how John only survived on cheese toast for breakfast during the majority of his uni career or where Roger pulls his extra drumsticks out of, give him the same feeling of trying to figure out how Brian always knows the best ways to cuddle.

“I love you,” Brian whispers, “I don’t think I said it enough.”

“You show it.”

* * *

Not that Roger is going to complain about John, Brian, and Freddie entering his room at half-past midnight but he might have something to say about the way all three of them look like hell.

“Uh,”

Brian walks towards him, their lips meet in an impressive display of fireworks. Although they feel like it is originating from the base of his skull. He has found what he is been looking for.

He shoves Brian away and works himself into the corner of his bed. Roger grips the sheet tightly, folding up underneath him. The memories shove over each other, trying to be the one at the forefront of his mind.

The only one he can focus on is a week exactly after Freddie died (Freddie died? Fuck. Fuck. Fucking hell. Jesus Christ. Freddie died!) when he and Brian were finishing up another interview. Brian had smiled, it did not reach his eyes and only curled the corner of his lips.

**“Are you going to okay tonight? That interview was… a little heavy.”**

**“Yeah, Roger. I’ll be fine.”**

And then the next morning he woke up feeling like someone died. It is not hard for his mind to make the conclusion that Brian had done something. He cannot believe Brian would do anything like that.

John and Freddie both leave them alone. Roger clenches his jaw so hard he is worried that he is going to break his jaw or crack a tooth. Brian takes a step back. His eyes run over Brian’s form. Too thin. Too pale. Not his Brian, not entirely and not yet. When Brian fully leans back against his desk, Roger releases the blanket from his grip.

”Going to call me a dumbass?” Brian asks softly.

Roger extends his legs, “what’s the point if you already know?”

Brian shrugs.

He exhales and then flings the pillow in Brian’s general direction. It hits the lamp and Brian scrambles to catch it before it falls over. He manages it but ends up knocking over Roger’s spare drumstick cup. Roger snorts.

“Could’ve let it fall. Now you’ve made it worse.”

“I seem to be doing that a lot, recently.”

He frowns, not disagreeing with this statement.

“What do you want me to say, Brian?”

“Huh?”

“Do you want me to get angry or forgive you?”

“Roger…”

“I can do either,” Roger shrugs, “but I can’t believe that you would do something so. What the hell did you even do?”

“I brought Freddie back.”

“Selling your soul is very scientific, Brian?”

“No.”

Roger sighs. He wants to get upset, but as much as he does not want to believe that Brian would be such a god-awful idiot, he is not surprised. He also knows that if he was given that same deal, he would probably take it. For any of them. The pain he feels in his memories covered by a thin sheen of chiffon so he does not have the ability to say he would not.

It would be hypocritical of him, and Roger hates hypocrites.

So, he wants to be angry, but he understands _why _Brian would do it.

“Why _you_?”

Brian blinks.

“Out of all of us. Why you? Why did you get offered the choice?”

“John has the Deacon Clan, and Ronnie kept him going. But why not Jim, who is the only one Freddie has ever called husband? Why not me? I loved Freddie as well, he’s _the _soulmate.”

Roger feels like he wants to be sick, “so why you?”

Brian looks away, shame heavy on his face, “because I was the weakest.”

Roger throws the second pillow at him, “far from it.”

“Do you know the answer?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Brian sags, “I don’t know, Roger. I just know it was the only option that I could live with.”

“There it is.”

He wants to touch Brian and at the same time, he wants to get out of the house, away from this uncomfortable reality.

“I hate that you could do that, I hate knowing that,” Roger says, “what you gave up. You shouldn’t have done so, not so willingly and not because you thought we might be better with Freddie instead of us.”

“Roger.”

“I love you too, for it. Giving us Freddie back, but I wish I didn’t. We would’ve moved on, not forgotten and never stopped loving, but we could have healed. This just gives us a second chance.”

Brian nods, his eyes watering. Roger wishes he could go to him. Hug him and comfort him, but he still cannot get over the fact of what Brian had considered. What he had done. Eventually maybe. But he cannot figure out where Brian got his ego or his martyr complex or a mixture of the two.

Brian stays away from him. Roger bites his lip, wondering why he is glad about this distance between them when all he has been doing is searching for Brian for the past two years.

“You called us a star system, once,” Roger is not sure he has spoken the words, “that we were all planetary bodies circling something, music I think you said. Each of our separate lovers and families, Ronnie, Dom, Jim, Chrissie, were moons.”

Brian nods.

“And that if one of us got knocked out of orbit the entire system would be out of whack.”

All Brian does is purse his lips.

“So, you just kept our solar system from getting out of whack.”

“You just hate the way I did it?”

“I just hate the way you did it.”

* * *

It does not take long for Jim to track the change in his boys’ relationship. Not that he is surprised. Brian is another rung in the trellis, their love is always expanding and branching out. Truthfully he is surprised at how long it took for any of them to make the move, himself noticing the change in late spring, Brian slipped into the band as though he had always been there.

As Jim finds out, it is because he _had _always been there. In another universe where he remembers seeing Brian’s pacing across the stage (stumbling into badly placed microphones). He wakes up one morning with that unyielding certainty that he knows who Brian _was _and not the quieter, exhausted man that has been giving his songs back to the world.

“Brian, can you come to help me for a second?”

He asks when the other three are distracted. John is busy trying to keep his children corralled while Roger watches his to make sure they do not injure themselves or others content with the chaos they bring. Freddie is helping between them, and Jim is certain that he is creating a conspiracy against John. Brian looks anything but content, and with his new-old memories, he knows why.

“Yes?”

“Trim that upper branch for me,” he might as well use the height while he is here.

“Oh sure – this one?”

“Mm.”

Brian gently bops him with the branch. Jim smiles in reflex.

“So, were you ever going to tell anyone that you gave away their memories of you for Freddie?”

There could have been a more delicate way of putting it, but Jim has always found that Brian if given the chance can get out of complicated conversations without even breaching the topic. Brian stills, eyes wide like he had been caught.

“You know?”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to.”

“No,” Brian murmurs, “I mean that you should know. I’m happy that you know. It just doesn’t happen randomly.”

Jim tilts his head.

“They had to kiss me to get their memories back.”

Ah. So the band does know. That explains why Roger is giving Brian the cold shoulder while constantly being around him and why John seems intent on always keeping Brian in his line of sight and why Freddie is always in physical contact with Brian. He is not surprised he is the last of the group to figure it out.

“We were trying to figure out when to tell you.”

“Apparently you don’t need to.”

“No,” Brian sits down on the bench.

“The others took it well?”

“About as well as could be expected.”

Jim sits down next to him, taking the clippers from trembling hands. Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. Why Brian looks like he is yearning for something with the kids. He is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I keep thinking that I failed the requirements on my side of the deal and that I’m going to wake up and everything is going to change again.”

Jim knows that Brian had not meant to say that. Brian closes his eyes and smacks himself lightly on the cheek before his finger starts to twitch against his lip. He has seen it enough times to know that bothering Brian know is going to further disrupt his ecosystem. It is like pruning a bush, cut enough and it is fine but cut too much or too little the rest of the plant gets sick.

He is too stunned to comfort Brian as well. The thought that all of _this _could go away because of some arbitrary rule of them forgetting Brian and letting him be forgotten. That deal would have never happened, these boys are far too entwined to pull one away.

“If something was going to happen, wouldn’t it have already?”

Brian looks up, “what?”

“Assuming whatever force you _bargained _with,” and Jim wants to go into the reasons why humans should never bargain with any being heavenly or not, “is as they are in the books, the punishment is typically obvious and quick.”

“You think?” Brian says softly.

Jim looks back to the porch, where Freddie’s coup has succeeded, and the Taylors have joined in. Both John and Roger are on the run from the hose. He smiles fondly at the chaos.

“Brian, you can’t live waiting for the bad thing to happen.”

He knows that is how Brian copes with the world. Treasure the good things and weather the bad, but this self-exile is doing no one any good.

“They love you.”

“But I hurt them.”

Jim shrugs, he is only working on assumptions, “you hurt me too, by even considering that I would want to make a trade for Freddie. I love him, truly and deeply. But also, I cherish what he cares about, and that is you three.”

“Why does everyone assume that I did it for purely selfless reasons?”

“You didn’t?”

Brian shakes his head but does not elaborate. Jim thinks about John’s trembling hands when Brian is out of the house.

“Have you sat down and talked with them?”

“After they found out.”

“But not anytime else? Perhaps when they aren’t trying to grapple with the idea that they had forgotten one of the loves of their life.”

“So I can hear more about how I shouldn’t have done that and let the world be and that I was an idiot?”

“If you need to hear that again,” Jim replies, “but it sounds like to me that you all need to figure out how you’re going to get past this. What your future will be.”

Brian straightens, hands falling to his lap. Jim half expects him to run for paper and pen to write down the newest song inspiration. The hand reaches for him and holds tightly. He notes that these hands are thinner, but no less able to play. There is a crescent cut in the center of his palm. Jim does not remember that being there.

Before Brian moves, Jim tightens his grip.

“Huh?”

“Just try not to do what you did again, I don’t think my heart can take the longing.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll take the apology.”

“I’m sorry that I hurt you, not that I did what I did.”

“And do the others know the distinction?”

“No, I never – when we talked.”

Jim smiles indulgently. Living with four geniuses has taught him that sometimes you have to explain things in the simplest terms. A grin breaks out Brian’s face (one of his true smiles, pointed teeth and a sparkle in his eye). He has not seen that in almost two and a half years, and it makes him fall in love the same as it did the first day he saw it.

Brian grips his face in his hands, and plants a light but a joy-filled kiss on his lips. Jim barely has time to respond before Brian is pulling back with that excited energy that he pulls from Roger.

“We have a future again.”

“I don’t think you ever lost it, you just didn’t know what it was going to look like.”

Brian’s smile dims somewhat, but then he is shrieking as a spray of water hits him in the back. Roger is tossing the hose to Freddie who is studiously looking away and John looks like the kid who does not notice the vase broken on the ground next to him. Jim swipes away the water that splashed onto him.

“Thank you,” Brian says cautiously.

He turns back to the others with a mischievous glint to his eyes. Jim bends down to pick up the clippers he dropped in surprise. Shrieks of laughter pierce the air, one warm and melodic. As he crouches to find them, because apparently, he threw them, he spots a singular white rose petal hidden under the bench.

Jim picks it up with a frown, “where’d you come from then?”

Brian’s cat, Stevie, weaves through his legs.

He catches flailing limbs in his peripheral. Those four had fallen into a pile of helpless laughter. John pulls Brian into a kiss, which turns long and affectionate before Roger bullies his way in between them to kiss Brian himself. Jim smiles as Freddie hooks his chin on Brian’s shoulder, he gets a wink from Freddie.

Maybe all they needed was time, the rest has always come easy to them.

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say, I really thought those few lines in the story summarized the main part of this story. And a happy ending, kind of. Do the boys ever talk about it? Do they fall apart because of Brian's action? Who knows, that's up to you to determine. All I know is I can now actually focus on other things now that this monstrosity is written, edited and published.


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